Grace Tollefson graduated from Lake Wobegon High School in 1938, a thespian and debater and member of the Order of the Shining Star, a quiet and sensible girl who surprised everyone and ran off with a man by the name of Alex Campbell. He was a handsome green-eyed fellow, the driver of a 1936 Singer coupe, who performed magic tricks with quarters and napkins, told jokes and tossed kids in the air, and seemed to have no prospect in this world. He kept a bottle of whiskey in the trunk of his car and he laughed too loud. The Tollefsons were united in opposition to him but Grace married him and moved to Saint Paul. Years went along, and people heard bits of news that she wasn’t entirely happy with him. A child came along, and another. And a third. He left her in 1948. As some people told it, he came home drunk and she locked him out, but it didn’t matter. There was nothing for her to do but get a ride back home and live off the charity of her family and the Lutheran church.
Her younger brother Lawrence bought her an old green mobile home and moved it into the yard behind his house, next to the garden. Lutheran ladies came and cleaned it up and donated old furniture, a three-legged table, a very nice green sofa with large holes chewed out of it, some rickety chairs, a reproduction of Larsson’s “The Last Supper.” People were nice to them, as you’d be nice to anybody who was very peculiar. Divorce in that town was as odd as a purebred dog. Grace could see what people thought as she walked down the street: We were right, we told you, now look at you.
The oldest boy was Earl, her daughter was Marlys, and the little boy was Walter, who was only three and couldn’t remember his father. When he asked his mother, she only said that Alex was a handsome man descended from Scottish nobility, that he had a weakness but it wasn’t anybody’s fault. When he asked his grandma Tollefson, she said, “Huh! Those Campbells were all alike. There wasn’t one of them worth mentioning. But it’s not your fault, Walter. You didn’t ask to be born into this world, now did you?” He didn’t ask again.
It was hard living in a mobile home, living off contributions. At night, when the four of them cleared the supper table and did dishes, when she was feeling especially sad, Grace said, “Well, what are we going to do when our ship comes in?” That was the cue to quit feeling sorry and to talk about what they’d do when they got rich. They’d have a big white brick mansion in Saint Paul with a stone wall around it, a crystal chandelier in the dining room, fireplaces in the bedrooms. Oriental rugs. A swimming pool. They’d have six servants, six ladies from the Lutheran church, to fix their meals and clean up. Earl had simple tastes and wanted a pony to ride bareback around the streets of Saint Paul and a .22 rifle. Marlys wanted a large dollhouse for her dolls, Mr. and Mrs. Parker White-hurst and their children, Jacqueline, Lorraine, and Kathy.
Walter went along with what they wanted, but one thing he didn’t say was that he hoped when the ship came in his father would be standing in the bow in a white uniform and a blue cap with gold braid.
One day they got a letter from a man in Philadelphia doing research on Scottish nobility, who asked who their ancestors were so he could look it up. He needed the information for a book he was writing. He enclosed a check for $15. So Grace wrote down what she knew about Alex’s ancestors and sent it off and didn’t think more of it until another letter arrived from Philadelphia five days later.
She opened the envelope. It was addressed to Mrs. Grace Campbell, but the letter was addressed “Your Royal Highness.” He wrote: “Today is the happiest day of my life as I greet my one true Sovereign Queen.” And went on to say that their branch of the Campbell family was first in the line of succession of the House of Stewart, the Royal Family of Scotland. She passed it to the children and they each read it carefully, as if it were spun gold and if they dropped it, it would shatter into little pieces. She was quiet a long time. Then she said, “It can’t be true but we’ll find out. Meanwhile, you’re not to tell a soul. You don’t tell anybody.” They promised.
A few days later, the Philadelphia man, whose name was D. R. Mackay, sent them a chart that unfolded bigger than their kitchen table. In the upper-left-hand corner were King James the Seventh, King James the Old Pretender, Prince Charles. There were several lines of counts and marquises, and in the lower-right-hand corner, skirting the clans of Keith and Ferguson, the lines led right straight to them: Earl, Marlys, and Walter. The Royal Family of Scotland living in Lake Wobegon in a green mobile home, furniture donated by the Lutheran church.
They were astounded beyond words. Disbelieving at first, afraid to put their weight on something so beautiful, afraid it was too good to be true, and then it took hold—this was grace, pure grace that God offered them. Not their will but His. Grace. Here they were in their same dismal place but everything had changed. They were different people. Their surroundings were the same, but they were different—and there were times in the months that followed when Walter wished he could tell somebody that he was a prince of Scotland, particularly his cousin Donna who lived in the house the Campbells lived behind and who made complex rules about who could play in her yard and for how long and what they had to do for her, as if she was royalty. Walter longed to tell her. One day D. R. Mackay wrote to Walter, “Your Royal Highness: Discovering you and your family has been the happiest accomplishment of my life. And if God in His infinite wisdom should deny me the opportunity to meet you face to face on this Earth, I should still count myself the luckiest of men for this chance to play a part, however small, in restoring Scotland to her former greatness. Please know that you are in my thoughts and prayers every day. And that I will work with every ounce of my being to restore you from your sad exile to the land, the goods, and the reverence to which you, by the grace of God, are entitled.” A boy doesn’t get a letter like that very often. He kept it under his mattress, he knew it by heart. He lay in bed and thought, over and over, “the land, the goods, and the reverence to which you are entitled.”
The Tollefsons and other people in town, of course, had gotten wind of those letters from Philadelphia and were curious; they tried to pry the secret out of the children, but they wouldn’t tell, and then some people began to resent them for keeping a secret. Lawrence said to Grace, “You know, Grace, sometimes you act like you think you’re too good to walk on the same ground with us.” She told him that she figured she was at least as good as anyone else. He said that if she was, maybe she’d like to try supporting herself. “Gladly,” she replied.
They packed up to move back to Saint Paul. Lawrence packed their old donated furniture in a trailer but at the last minute Grace said, “Take it off. I don’t want to take that with me. That’s not mine. That belongs to the church.”
“You might need it. Don’t be so proud,” he said. She looked at him. She said, “Lawrence, what I need in this life is understanding and love. And I need style. And I won’t be carrying it with me from Lake Wobegon. I’m going to have to find it where I’m going.” The children sat in the back seat and looked at the neighbors who’d come to look at them as they left. Marlys held the White-hursts on her lap. “Someday, when we’re the Royal Family, they’ll have a parade here in our honor. And I’m not going to come,” she announced.
Life in Saint Paul has not been easy for them. Earl moved away a few years ago, he was tired of the whole business. He went to school to study bookkeeping and got a job in a salvage yard, as a bookkeeper. Grace had him sign a paper relinquishing all rights to succession. Marlys is twenty-four and still lives with her mother in their apartment near the State Fair grounds and so does Walter, a student at Hamline University. Over the years they’ve read all the histories of Scotland, learned its geography, and studied over and over the sad story of the House of Stewart, from which they’re descended. That the English in 1688 overthrew their true and rightful king, James the Seventh, and brought in the Dutchman William of Orange, and when William and Mary bred no successor, the Stewarts were waiting in the wings, glad to forgive the English and come and be King and Queen again. But no, England sent to Germany for a motley bunch of princes from the House of Hanover. Brought them in and made them royalty. In 1746, Bonnie Prince Charlie came over from France and rallied his brave Highlanders and marched south into England and won battles against the English, then, for some reason, turned around and went back. And in April, at the Battle of Culloden, his army and his hopes were torn to shreds, and the Stewarts went over the hill into history.
Whenever Grace saw an article about Queen Elizabeth in the paper, she bit her lip and shook her head. Usurpers was what they were, all of them. Germans, sitting on the Royal Throne of Scotland. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t even decent.
Year after year, month after month, letters arrived from D. R. Mackay: he was forming a committee for the restoration of the House of Stewart to the throne, he was enlisting the help of other governments—secret meetings had been held and overtures made and some very encouraging signals had been received, extremely encouraging—he didn’t want the Family to be troubled with details but he had been encouraged by the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, and even the Americans had indicated an interest—so it could happen any time, they should prepare themselves. Whenever their faith was low, Grace read the letters out loud and she turned to Walter and said, “Walter, tell us what it’ll be like when we get the call.”
He said: “It’ll come at eight-thirty in the evening on a summer day. August. We’ll have eaten sweet corn and tomatoes and hot dogs for supper, and the phone rings and they tell us to be on a plane the next morning. We’ll be too excited to sleep. We’ll go to the airport, exhausted, and get on the plane. Mother is wearing her good navy-blue dress, Marlys her silk bridesmaid dress from Nancy’s wedding, I have my dark wool suit on. We land in Glasgow. There are huge crowds of people. Six men in blue pinstripe suits get on the plane, they’re from Scotland Yard, they escort us to a helicopter. We fly to Holyrood Castle on High Street in Edinburgh. We’re taken in to freshen up and have a light lunch and we can hear a low roar outside, and after a while we’ll go up to the balcony—there is the balustrade, with thirteen microphones. And down there are a hundred thousand Scots. And we walk forward and speak.”
“You do it, Walter. I’m too nervous,” said Grace.
He often thought what he would say. Perhaps something humorous like “How much is all this costing?” Or “Nice to see ya.” But he’d aim for something royal and dignified. It was wonderful to imagine being restored and going to Scotland and being the Royal Family, though more modest than the Germans down in Buckingham Palace—they wouldn’t need a private yacht or jet planes or new dresses to go off to fancy balls in—the Scottish Family didn’t need all that. They’d be a good royal family, thrifty and sensible and plain. Having known poverty, they would eschew excess; whatever was satisfactory would be good enough.
Two weeks ago they received a telegram from their father, saying, “Wire money. Five hundred dollars. Need desperately. Signed, Alex.” Grace didn’t know what to do. Alex! What if he—Walter said, “Don’t do anything. If he can wire us, he can call us.” Three days later he called. Walter had never heard his father’s voice. It said, “Walter! This is wonderful. So good to talk to you. I think about you every day. How old are you?”
“Twenty-four, Dad.”
“My God. It doesn’t seem that long ago.”
“Well, I get a year older every year, just like everybody else.”
“Walter,” he said, “I need money. I don’t need five hundred dollars. I need more like five thousand. I’ve been indicted for mail fraud. I didn’t do anything wrong. Nothing to hurt people. But they want to put me away for ten, fifteen years, and Walter, I’m too old to go to prison. I gotta leave the country.”
“What is it you did?”
His father said, “I was in the genealogy business. I made up family trees for people. But I can explain—let me tell you, son—” Walter’s face went flat and numb. He said, “You didn’t! God. You did this to us. Why did you do this?”
“I meant to tell you before this. I really meant to tell you. It was meant as a gift, I wanted you to be proud. I knew how those Tollefsons would pity you—I wanted you to be so proud of the Campbell family that I wouldn’t have to come crawling back. I hoped you would come and find me.”
Walter said he’d send him as much money as he could, and put down the phone. Grace said, “You didn’t tell him then about our secret.” Walter said, no, there’d be time to tell him later.
She said, “Oh, Walter, what would I do without you? You’re so strong. You’re so good to me. You’re a prince, you know. They can put a crown on a dog and call it a prince, but you are a prince through and through. They may not know it now, but they’ll know it soon. Next year we’ll be in Edinburgh with the bands playing and the flags flying and the crowds cheering.”